Bozo Show set circa 1960

TV studio circa 1973

When I was 16, I visited a local radio station; KLAZ, that was four blocks from my house. I volunteered to help them with music research. It was called RMR (random music research). My job was to pick random phone numbers from the white pages and ask the person answering the phone if they would listen and rate 10 songs. The top songs would be in the music rotation for the week.

As a sophmore at the University of Central Arkansas, I earned my FCC third-class radiotelephone license. That license allowed me to have an on-air radio shift on UCA's radio station. I was engineer for a bluegrass radio show on Wednesday evenings. My on-air shift was on Tuesday and Thursday nights where I played rock and progressive rock music. I was on the air when the plane carying the members of Lynyrd Skynyrd crashed. I gave the grim news to the audience that evening.

KLAZ radio

KUCA Radio

In 1978, I heard that the University of Arkansas at Little Rock had formed a Radio, TV and Film department. I was excited to hear about that since UCA had only a radio program. I toured the new department in the summer of 1978 and enrolled. Dr. David Guerra, the department chair, introduced me to another student; Jerry Killion. Jerry was the closest thing to an engineer the department had. Dr. Guerra assigned me to help Jerry with the wiring of an old Air Force surplus audio mixer. Jerry was hesitant because had been assigned other "helpers" that didn't know the business end of a soldering iron. Since then, Jerry and I are lifelong friends and chat every week.

The following year, I enrolled in my first of three internships. Jim Respress, an instructor in the department found me an internship at a local audio recording studio since I was focused to become a recording engineer at the time. The intership was at Pinnacle Recording Studio. My supervisor was Clyde Sndyer and the engineer was Bill Hammit. Bill was a brillant engineer and he and Clyde taught me proper micing of instruments, mixing and mastering.

UALR RTVF Department

Pinnacle Studio Fall 1979

My second internship was at the Pulaski County School District. They needed help with the school district's AV department. The department head, Carol, knew nothing about A/V so I helped her and the district's still photographer connecting TV's and the huge 3/4" vtr'S that had just started entering the A/V market. The photographer, Charlie also taught me how to develop and print B&W 35mm film. They let me use the photo lab as much as I wanted as long as I provided my own chemicals and paper.

My final and maybe my best internship was in the KAAY news department with reporter Terry Caldwell. Terry had worked with the RTVF department to create a news reporting class composed of junior and seniors that would make a collaborative show called "Gamut". The basic idea was to provide public service programming for KLPQ, their sister station, on Sunday nights. Since I worked at KAAY as an intern, they entrusted me to help produce the programs and then engineer the airing of them. It didn't hurt that I was the only student in the RTVF department that had a FCC third-class radiotelephone license and could legally operate the station.

Darkroom photo developing

KAAY news control room

About a month into my internship, Terry asked me if I would be interested in engineering a new news-talk show. The show was an evening show hosted by a talent that the station brought into the market to get this show started. His name was Dick Price and the show was named "The Singing Pig", named after his love of the Arkansas Razorbacks. I accepted the part-time job. After the show concluded at 10pm, I was the DJ on KAAY until 12am. Needless to say, that was a great opportunity for me to be in charge of a 50,000 clear-channel radio station!

The next opportunity was a weekend babysitting an automation system. Dave Montgomery, one of the engineers at KAAY, asked me if I would take care of an overnight shift that lasted 12-hours per day. The automation system was not automated at that time since the memory had been wiped during the move from KAAT to the AM station that had purchased the system. David didn't want to work overnight on it so asked me to handle it. I had to change tapes every 30-minutes and then a 5-minute newscast live at 55-minutes before the hour. I was tired after working 24-hours that weekend!

KAAY master control

Automation system

While I was working part-time at the radio station, one of my friends, Brent Franks, was working as the house DJ at a late-night club called “The Retreat II”. Brent went on to work at Smugglers Inn, a resturant/bar in West Little Rock and told me to interview with BJ at The Retreat since theres an opening for a DJ. I interviewed with BJ and got the job. Not too bad wages either! I got a part of the “gate” as my pay. So, the more people I packed into the place, the more money I got. Made over $100 per night which back then was good money for 5-7 hours of work. The place did not really get going until after 12-midnight. Since it was a late-night club, it could stay open until 5am. So, I would show up around 11pm, get my records ready for the night and kick out the jam. Every once in awhile, they would invite a live band in and I would play music during their breaks. So I learned alot about DJing live vs. on the air.

About 6-months after I took the job at The Retreat, Brent told me an opening was at Smugglers Inn as well. This was a traditional bar/restaurant with a divide between the sides. So, they wanted dance music there. Also, I met a pretty cool manager named Jerry. He was a laid-back dude and gave me money to buy records whenever I wanted. Made friends with a lot of the regular customers back then too.

Retreat II DJ booth

Smugglers Inn

One of the pieces of equipment I used at KAAY on-air and in the production rooms was the RCA BC-7 audio board. The BC-7 was one of the most popular boards in the market - an absolutely dependable board. The side benefit from using the BC-7 was hearing through the grapevine that KATV Ch. 7 was looking for a part-time board operator. The position was Friday's at 3pm running production audio and then taking the on-air production shift at 6:30pm until station sign-off. That shift required me to run the Friday night 10pm newscast audio. I worked Saturday and Sunday mornings from 6:00am to 3:00pm. As the on-air audio technician, I was responsible for any audio on the air and I had to keep the commercial logs and descrepency reports. Whats up with the picture of me with an audio cart in my mouth? Its often said, working in TV is minimum wage and all the tapes one can eat! As an aside, I ended up running audio for the Bozo show - my childhood dream came true!

In 1981, KATV had layoffs. As a part-timer, I was one of the first to be let-go. So, I focused on school since I was a Junior at that time. I was president of the local Alpha Epsilon Rho, the National Honorary Brodadcasting Society and it had a yearly awards contest to select the best video work within a region of the country. The Ohio region contacted me to see if we would sponsor it at the University. The judge had to be a professional broadcaster in the market. I called the news directors at the three TV stations and Mr. Tony Windsor, the news director at KTHV, the CBS affiliate, said he would be glad to help. So, on a Saturday, he and I met at the UALR studio surrounded by stacks of videotapes. He would mark each tape with scoring that would reveal the top three tapes in each division. Well, what he didn't know was I snuck my resume tape into one of the stacks and it won in that division! I had to fess up but the outcome was he offered me a part-time news videotape editing job on the spot! So, I was back working at a TV station.

KATV audio technician

KTHV editing system

In 1983, I had been promoted to ENG Coordinator and was working fulltime. A friend of mine at the station had heard through the grapevine that an editing position was open at KXAS TV, the NBC affiliate in Fort Worth. I heard about it on in late April and was on a plane to be interviewed on a Tuesday. I visited and met with Mr. Tom McDonald, the chief editor at KXAS and a veteran newsman. He interviewed me and gave me a quick test to make sure I could edit within a time limit. I passed and he offered me the job that day! I flew back home and gave my two-weeks notice. On May 7th, 1984 I walked into KXAS and thought I had it made.

In 1986, I was offered a new job at one of the local hospital groups in town. Harris Methodist Hospital was about to sponsor a local physician a contract to produce 250 one-minute news pieces that would play during a newscast and sponsored by the hospital. The hospital didn't have any broadcast quality video production equipment nor a studio. They asked me to design and build a state-of-the-art broadcast facility. So, I was working at KXAS in the afternoon and evening but during the mornings, I was planning the facility. On November 11th, 1986 I tendered my resignation. They were very happy for me at the TV station. This I thought was when I had it made.

KXAS video editor

Harris Methodist Health Services

The studio was using about 80 hours per month and the rest of the time I was promoting the studio services to other departments of the hospital group. I was moderately successful but still had a large number of hours each month available. I approced my manager, Mike Boggs, and asked him if I could market to outside companies and at first he said no since Harris was a non-profit entity. After checking with the CFO, it was determined that Harris could make a profit as the Teleproduction Center as it was called. It was a separate entity from the non-profit side. Within six months, Harris Teleproduction Center was exceeding its yearly budget and was making a profit.

In 1994, I was seeing the handwriting on the wall that Harris Hospital was not going to renew the contract and the studio was to be shut down. My wife and I had a talk saying that we could solicit the customers that I had groomed at Harris and create an Edit House at our house. I purchased at that time, a cutting edge non-linear editing system called the Avid Media Composer. I told my friend at KXAS, Jim Borden who was the production manager if there was a position I could work at the station while I was getting my editing business off the ground. He said there was an editor position open to work on promos at night. So, I took that job and the editing system there just happened to be an Avid as well. So, I was paid to learn the Avid at KXAS and worked mornings on my own system. After six months working full time at the station and four or five hours in my business each day, I was ready to take the plunge full time with my business. We branded it, The Edit House. Working at home was a blessing and a curse. The blessing part was walking 50 steps from my bedroom to work. The curse was being so close to work, I felt like I couldn't get away from work! There was always something to do and I would find myself working nights and weekends instead of spending down time with my family.

Harris Teleproduction Center

The Edit House

After working in my home office for six months, we decided to look into moving into an office. Primarily to help get me away from work and a place that was more professional for clients. We settled on a space five-minutes from our home - in the Woodhaven office park. At first, we rented three adjacent 10'x10' rooms. One was our primary Avid editing room, the second was our graphics system and the third was my office. In 1996 I was busy and decided we could support an employee. His name was Ralphy Bissey. Ralph was one of those individuals that can edit, create graphics, sweeten audio and program Macromedia Director. That left me to focus on sales, marketing and project management.

Fast forward to 2003. Our clients were starting to ask if we could help them with production as well as editing and graphics. We ramped up by adding staff, equipment and capabilities. We rebranded from The Edit House to Big Bad Wolf Creative Group. We are all about stories! Everyone has one. The year 2025 we are celebrating our 31st year in busines.

Chuck with client

The Edit House